“The Kind of Democracy the Negro Expects” is a speech that was first given by the activist William Pickens in 1918 and on a number of occasions in the years immediately after World War I. The entry of the United States into the World War I in April 1917 presented a number of challenges for civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Many African Americans had little enthusiasm for the war effort. They were forced to make use of inferior, segregated facilities and subjected to the wholesale denial of their political and civil rights across most of the South, and the war at best seemed far removed from their daily concerns. At worst, the rhetoric of President Woodrow Wilson, that the conflict was a war for democracy to free oppressed peoples overseas, could be seen as little more than hypocrisy, given the way African Americans were treated at home. Moreover, America’s wartime allies, such as Britain, France, and Belgium, had imposed colonial rule on nonwhite countries across Africa and Asia, with little concern or respect for the democratic rights of the indigenous peoples.